


Help! I Can Barely Love Myself At The Best Of Times, And I Think I've Alienated Everyone Who Cares About Me!

by Alexilulu



Series: Help! I Keep Getting Into Sexy Situations With People In My Life! [5]
Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Depression, F/F, background Kurusu Akira
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 09:57:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13995816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexilulu/pseuds/Alexilulu
Summary: Sadayo thinks about the past. And the future.





	Help! I Can Barely Love Myself At The Best Of Times, And I Think I've Alienated Everyone Who Cares About Me!

**Author's Note:**

> I feel bad about how much fucking depressing shit I'm about to write for these two and got inspired (by a depressing shit song Jaya aggressed me with (again)) so I wanted to do something short, quick and a little bitter and a little sweet. 
> 
> Takes place in the indeterminate future after the end of Help! My New Doctor Is Really Hot And I Think She Likes Me?! (which isn't over yet. it will be (soon)).

On her nights off (now free from her delivery health job and that false debt), Sadayo does her best to keep herself busy. Which typically means she strips down to her sleep shirt and nothing else the moment she arrives home, finds a bag of dark chocolate in the pantry she restocks just for this purpose, then burrows under the largest blanket in the apartment with her phone.

In the years since she got of school and her home stay in British Columbia after, the only way Sadayo has to keep up with her former classmates, friends (and the odd ex she still can stand to see) is social media. She manicures her follows meticulously on every platform, ignoring the big names and news and bad memes in favor of just watching her friends lives go by.

Go racing past her, honestly.

Photos of kids and cousins, dinners and drinks, selfies and candids scroll by as she flicks slowly past them. Marriages and new partnerships and new lives. Lives she was a part of not so long ago, even. School was a good time for her; She wasn't the top of her class, but she made at least friends with basically anyone who talked to her for long enough, her sardonic streak out in full force in a hundred dorm room debates at 3 am, several beers deep. She misses it so much. A time before responsibility.

A time before guilt, and penance, and everything else. She knows it’s not her fault, intellectually, but the stunted growth is there all the same. It still hurts.

Mixed in the sea of posts about their lives from her Japanese classmates are the few English-speaking friends she made in Victoria. Photos of fir trees covered in snow from Terry’s hiking, coffee Rebecca made and topped with handcrafted foam in the shape of a snowflake that makes her stomach rumble and grab another handful of chocolate, burgers that she knows would make her feel sick to her stomach that she loved to indulge in with Craig. So many photos of people she misses more than she could have imagined before she left. People she took for granted.

What she wouldn't give to travel. Not just travel outside Tokyo, but escape Japan again. Find somewhere she could really be happy again. Hawaii wasn't too bad, all things considered. Maybe she can go back…someday. With a certain someone.

She keeps scrolling, years back at this point. Searching for…nothing, really. Wasting time, procrastinating. Not wanting to get back out of bed for anything, not wanting to face adulthood and all the crap she knows she should be doing that doesn’t stimulate her. Teaching is great, a joy, but the busywork is mind-numbing.

Her most recent addition to her social media following pops up deep in her timeline, to her surprise. Akira gave her his url, mostly because he saw her scrolling listlessly through it on his bed, one night. It's a year old picture, a youthful Akira at his first day of high school, she guesses. Posing in his new uniform in the bathroom mirror, a jacket in black with white stitching and a houndstooth pattern on the collar. She flicks past Akira before she starts thinking about what a cute kid he is in his uniform, delving further into old college antics.

Maria, the exchange student learning high level Japanese for a translation degree, eating taiyaki with the most surprised look on her face. Sadayo snorts, remembers the day vaguely, but keeps scrolling. Taki, the sports scholarship she tutored (and had a very brief one night stand with) posing in uniform, soccer ball tucked under his arm. Emi, her old roommate, resplendent in a sundress sitting in a field somewhere outside Tokyo, Mt. Fuji in the background. 

Sadayo wonders, briefly, if the other recent addition to her life has an account. Probably not, but…She thinks about what they must have been like, in college. In high school.

And then Akira drops into her feed again, in a middle school gakuran throwing up the peace sign with a blank expression, then climbing a tree, then hanging from it upside down, then a close in shot of him perched on the branch and looking off into the distance, light reflecting off his glasses. Sadayo frowns, keeps scrolling. Following him was a bad idea, if this was how it was going to be every time she does this. Like she doesn't have enough reminders about the differences between them. Even if those differences made them what they were, who they are now to each other. A bad couple for both parties turned friends, closer than most.

Watching all these people’s lives go by really reminds her how much she’d given up, been forced to leave behind over the last two years. All the friendships she abandoned when she had to choose between her life and her happiness.

Her eyes flick up to the entryway when a key clicks into the lock. Sadayo doesn’t move from her spot barely peeking out of her blanket on the bed, just closes her eyes. She feels so tired, like she’s been up for days. It always feels like this, when she remembers the life she almost had, if not for a heart too big and a family too evil.

“Hey, you didn’t say what you wanted, so—Oh. Bed already?” Tae walks in, a plastic bag of takeout in her hand and an overnight bag slung over her shoulder.

At least here’s something—someone—to remind her that the last two years haven’t all been pain. Haven’t all been loss and loneliness. She’s gained so much—even when she lost Akira she got him back. Eventually.

“Mmmh.” Sadayo mumbles, the weariness in her voice all too real.

“Ah, yes. You know, past Sadayo planned for this, you know.” Sadayo hears the thump of Tae's bag against the floor and the takeout on the dinner table—where Sadayo had set up her workspace for a night of grading tests and planning next year’s syllabus, the most dreaded activity of the year in her mind—and feels the bed dip under Tae’s slight weight when she sits down on the bed next to Sadayo, brushing her curly hair out of her face. “Do I get to remind you what your reward for actually getting work done is?”

“Mrn, no.” Sadayo doesn’t open her eyes, playing the sleepy fool. Then Tae’s lips pressed to her neck invoke a very different sound from her, a sustained murmur of pleasure deep in her throat. “Mm, ok, maybe.”

“Well, if you finish your lesson plan before I run out of excuses to lay on your couch seductively, you get to find out if I’m wearing panties under this dress or not.” Tae whispers, lips closing around Sadayo’s earlobe and resting her teeth just barely against the skin.

“Past me is a scheming bitch, and I love her. You do have to let me get up if you want that to happen, though.” Sadayo wishes with all her heart that she didn’t have to get up, leave Tae alone to write a god damn lesson plan. Wants so badly to show her how much Tae means to her, even in such a boring, domestic situation like this.

“Mm, true. But…I had an idea, on the way over. What, if…” An arm snakes under the blanket, caressing Sadayo’s side and sliding down to her hip. “I gave you a lesson plan of my own.”

“Ohh. Mmm, what lessons?” Sadayo's wish being granted leaves her shocked, eyelids fluttering softly at Tae’s touch.

“Anatomy, of course…” Tae’s voice is a dangerous purr into her ear, tongue flicking out and running along the edge of it and getting a shiver of pleasure in return. “We’ll have to start with the basics. Are you ready for class?”

“I-I forgot to study.” Sadayo murmurs, and Tae pulls back, catching her eye and smiling.

“Oh, don’t worry. This is a hands on class.”


End file.
